A 2010 program headed by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to help Moscow develop a “Russian Silicon Valley” may instead have drawn some of America’s biggest tech companies into “industrial espionage”
(FOX)– even advancing the country’s military and spying operations, according to a new report by Clinton critic Peter Schweizer’s Government Accountability Institute.
“There are serious national security questions that have been raised,” the report said.
The program was pitched as a partnership involving U.S. and Russian government entities and companies. Major U.S. corporations like Boeing, Google, General Electric, Cisco and Microsoft – also generous donors to the Clinton’s family foundation – were solicited by Clinton to invest more than a billion dollars in the Skolkovo tech park outside Moscow, formally called the Skolkovo Innovation Center.
The goal, Clinton said in speeches and to Russian media, was to “break down barriers with Russia,” create “more free flow of people and information” between the two countries, and ultimately strengthen Russia.
“We want to help because we think that it’s in everyone’s interest do so,” Clinton said in a 2010 speech at a U.S.-Russia summit, as she discussed building a technology center “right outside Moscow.”
However, the project may have inadvertently launched some of these companies into risky terrain. The FBI issued an “extraordinary warning” in 2014 to companies doing business with the Skolkovo Foundation that “Skolkovo could draw them unwittingly into industrial espionage,” noting Skolkovo was a crucial part of Dmitry Medvedev’s plan to modernize Russia’s military.
The FBI also said Skolkovo “may be a means for the Russian government to access our nation’s sensitive or classified research, development facilities and dual-use technologies with military and commercial applications.”